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The ‘COP of Truth’ Just Normalized a New Kind of Climate Denialism
The new denialism no longer bellows about hoaxes; it asks for more studies, more modelling, more consultations, always in the service of delay.
Dec 02, 2025
Belém promised a “COP of truth.” What unfolded was a courteous unravelling of ambition, as denialism left global climate action wobbling at the moment it needs steel.
As the Chair of the UK’s COP30 youth delegation, I realized within hours that this United Nations climate conference would be defined by its optics—not its outcomes. The venue teemed with political hopefuls more interested in cameras than commitments, and with a record 1,600 fossil fuel and 531 carbon-capture lobbyists, 1 in every 25 attendees served commercial interests.
Then came the negotiations, where delegates quietly diluted the science. References to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), long regarded as the global lodestar of climate knowledge, were either softened into ambiguity or dropped altogether. Several companies went even further, trumpeting improvements in emissions intensity as if they were genuine reductions.
It was greenwashing par excellence, a polite fiction to excuse keeping emissions exactly where they are.
After the failures of COP29 and COP30, the process will only matter again if governments are finally pushed toward honesty and supported by tools that can hold them to it.
So it was no surprise when the negotiations titled toward erasure, governing not just the deal but the language that framed it. The term “fossil fuel” vanished from the final Belém Political Package, replaced with sweeping and unenforceable vows to renewables and adaptation funding.
We should have foreseen how settled climate science would be twisted and spun. After all, one investigation found more than 14,000 pieces of COP-related disinformation in just the three months before Belém. Much of it was generated by AI, including a widely shared fake video that showed the host city swallowed by floods.
This version of climate denialism reveals the moral credibility of climate action is being leveraged to keep emissions frozen in place. It no longer bellows about hoaxes, except by Donald Trump who has happily dragged America back into isolationism. In the diplomatic world it asks for more studies, more modelling, more consultations, always in the service of delay. It is denialism wearing the mask of governance, and it is far more corrosive than the loud bluff it replaced.
The timing could hardly be worse. The IPCC’s carbon budget for a 50% chance of staying below 1.5°C will vanish by 2029 if emissions continue at today’s pace. This is also the first year after the Global Stocktake that mandates governments to draft national plans that will set our course until 2030.
And what happens now determines the shape of the decisive decade. Crossing 1.5°C sharply raises the risk of irreversible cryosphere collapse—rapid ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland which will lock the world into meters of sea-level rise that imperil coastal megacities across every hemisphere. At 2°C, another billion people will face severe water scarcity—especially in the Global South where adaptation capacity is lowest and exposure is highest. This reality is why the deliberate sidelining of climate science is not just exasperating but catastrophic.
And COP30’s lone nod to honesty—the Declaration on Information Integrity—feels painfully thin. The declaration, which promises to counter climate falsehoods, was only signed by 12 countries. And with no sanctions or accountability, it is a gesture at truth in the exact moment truth needed teeth.
We need a global firewall for climate truth: binding rules for climate information, a UN body capable of verifying data with transparent AI, and legal duties on platforms to curb the algorithmic spread of lies. Climate inaction is becoming a matter of legal liability. That burden should fall equally on those who deliberately twist the science.
There must be a counterweight capable of tracing disinformation, naming the culprits of confusion, and dragging the debate back to the science that anchors it. Only then can we hope to restart global climate momentum. And in an irony worthy of our age, the technology that helped generate the mess—AI—may be the only thing sharp enough to cut through it.
According to Sachin Dev Duggal, Britain’s foremost expert on applied artificial intelligence and EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2023, the internet is now a space where reliable information sits beside convincing fabrications, and no amount of earnest climate communication will fix this without tools that can separate accuracy from invention at scale.
AI is already showing what those tools might look like. It can review millions of words in seconds and test claims against established climate data with a consistency no human team can match. We are already seeing this in practice. For example, the machine-learning model ClimateBERT has analysed corporate reports and exposed misleading emissions claims. Another model, CLIMINATOR, has also been trained to hold political and corporate actors to account by checking whether their climate statements align with the evidence or contradict it. And the FactCrisis project, cofounded by the EU, has used AI during heatwaves to track false statistics and identify accounts pushing them, offering a glimpse of what becomes possible when AI and international bodies finally start reinforcing one another.
Duggal argues that the next step is a decentralized verification model. Climate data from satellites, sensors, and national inventories would sit in a shared public ledger that no ministry or corporation can quietly revise. When a government or company makes a claim about progress, anyone could check it against a record that does not bend to convenience. It would make the small acts of creative reporting that feed climate denialism far harder to get away with.
Yet today’s AI carries a flaw that limits its usefulness. Large language models are fluent but ungrounded, reproducing the language of climate science without retaining the facts that give it weight, which makes them unreliable referees in a space awash with motivated distortions. Duggal sees that any serious AI tool must reconnect claims to their evidence, trace where the data came from, and reveal the steps that turned information into a conclusion. This is the direction of his SeKondBrain project, which concentrates on how to build these evidential scaffolds so that an AI system can point to the exact documents, numbers, or assumptions that shaped its judgement. That kind of traceability matters because it gives climate negotiators and regulators something concrete to interrogate. And without systems built to preserve and expose the evidence behind their outputs, AI will remain too opaque to play any serious role in protecting science.
After the failures of COP29 and COP30, the process will only matter again if governments are finally pushed toward honesty and supported by tools that can hold them to it. Without that basic partnership, we may have reached the point where another COP has nothing left to say.
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Killing Climate Lies That Kill
This game of lies started decades ago with big oil and gas corporations, long before “fake news,” disinformation and misinformation were a thing. It's only gotten worse.
Nov 14, 2025
Blatant lies are putting the people and our planet at risk. Often told for profit or power’s sake, they hurt economic, environmental, and social standing of most of us at the expense of a few. In this nasty game, those who strive to expose the truth and stand up for progress pay the steepest price. And they are environmental activists, journalists, scientists, and ordinary citizens defending their communities.
This month, two pivotal global summits happen that could bring change. In Bangkok, Thailand, the International Civil Society Week brought together over a thousand citizen activists from around the world. In Belem, Brazil, COP30—the global climate conference—will see governments, businesses, scientists, and many others negotiate. Citizen activists and civil society may finally have a say there. The last three climate summits held in countries where there’s little democratic freedom and heavy reliance on oil production shunned them.
To fight the lies that stall progress, Brazil has launched a Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change at the climate summit. The civil society week declaration calls strongly for both climate action and ending disinformation. Global civil society leaders like Oxfam, ActionAid, and Greenpeace as well as hundreds of grassroots organizations from Afghanistan to Zambia have endorsed.
However, buzzwords like disinformation and lack of information integrity, in their sophistication, often dull the impact. Perhaps they feel inauthentic. We need to think outside the box to engage in more authentic conversations involving people with diverse viewpoints.
For starters, let’s call false information what they are, lies. Lies that pervert the progress, hurt the many, and kill those who speak up. This game of lies started decades ago with big oil and gas corporations, long before “fake news,” disinformation and misinformation were a thing. What has gotten worse is that they are now blatantly colluding with governments and political leaders around the world to protect their short-term gain.
Those who stand to lose the most in the game are ordinary folks, especially those who struggle to make a daily living or don’t have the resources to defend themselves.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t only about “social justice.” The climate lies stall economic growth. The United Sates, once the global champion of the free market, is today doomed to become uncompetitive. President Trump, sponsored by American oil oligarchs blatantly lied at the United Nations earlier this year. His claims that renewable energy is dangerous, expensive, and unreliable will hurt the economic progress of the United States and the world.
He attacked countries making progress on renewable energy. The narrative of lies leads to decisions and bullying of nations and communities. When Trump raised tariffs against solar panels made in Southeast Asia, workers lost jobs. This includes Thailand, where civil society week was held.
Examples are many from Trump and other regimes. Russian bots, European and Australian leaders, too, have spread lies about the unreliability of renewable energy, including false threats of job loss and a rise in commodity prices. China, despite being the global leader in renewable energy, attacks environmental activists.
The lies kill. In the past decade, over 2,000 activists have paid with their lives for speaking up and standing up to protect forests, rivers, and community resources. They stood up against coal and oil extraction, mining, logging, land grabbing, and large-scale development that destroyed communities.
Civil society and activists who speak up get labelled foreign agents or eco-terrorists. They are arrested, harassed in public and in courts, and bullied online. This is despite their efforts to try to protect us. Every year, climate disasters, worsened by fossil fuels and harmful developments, kill tens of thousands and displace millions. The lies kill both blatantly and silently.
For the lies and bullying to end, we must engage in an open, honest, and empathic conversation. We need to have dialogue with diverse viewpoints. And this is not easy because all of us are burdened with our daily struggles and comfortable with information consumption habits. Hearing difficult truths and contradicting points of view are stressful.
Civil society, movements, development organizations, and media are losing relevance and trust among the general public. We have failed at listening, speaking, and interacting with farmers, women workers, students, young men, doctors, and business folks. Yes, we do speak up, but well-intentioned campaigns often end up merely preaching to the choir.
We get likes on social media, signatures for petitions, and like-minded folks at street protests. But that isn’t enough to build empathy and build a majority movement, even with those who are most likely to suffer from climate lies and bullying. To connect with people and come together with people, we must first care about who they are. As agents of social change, it is not just about playing to an audience but taking care as an ethical duty.
At the same time, we must shout out at the big fat liars, Big Oil, and their colluding partners in media and politics. Citizens, journalists, movements, and governments must stand for science, reason, and progress. This means urgently demanding an end to fossil fuels and moving to green energy while also protecting communities at risk during the transition. We must also defend the activists who stand up for our rights and the planet.
More of us must act today and stand with those who do. The argument for collective demand and action for climate progress isn’t just moral. Let’s call it collectively selfish–it may just improve our health and economic and social well-being.
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Trump Is the Most Dangerous Criminal in US History
His most dangerous crime is not simply corruption or obstruction, nor even incitement of insurrection: It’s the deliberate attempted destruction of American democracy itself.
Jul 22, 2025
When historians look back on this era, they’ll inevitably ask how a nation built on principles of democracy, justice, and equality allowed one man to commit such a broad range of crimes and abuses, and whether President Donald Trump is indeed the most dangerous criminal in American history.
To fully grasp the gravity of Trump’s actions, consider the extensive categories of his criminal and potentially criminal conduct, each more disturbing than the last.
First, there’s the relentless financial corruption. Trump has long played fast and loose with the law when it came to his finances. In New York, his company was convicted of tax fraud and financial manipulation designed to deceive lenders and inflate his wealth. Trump University was shuttered after a $25 million fraud settlement, its “students” left feeling defrauded.
His charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, was dissolved following revelations that funds intended for charity were instead used to benefit Trump personally and politically, and to pay off Pam Bondi in Florida where he and Epstein were living (she was AG for almost a decade and never went after Epstein).
If America is to survive as a free nation, we must confront the reality of Trump’s actions.
But Trump’s shady financial dealings didn’t begin or end with these public scandals. For decades, he was closely associated with New York’s organized crime families. Trump Tower itself was built using concrete provided by mob-linked companies.
Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor and attorney as I detail in The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, was a notorious fixer and lawyer for mob figures such as Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano.
Trump’s casinos also regularly skirted the law, drawing scrutiny from federal investigators for potential money laundering linked to organized crime, and his former casino manager recently revealed to CNN that Trump and Jeffrey Epstein once even showed up together with underage girls in tow (the White House denies the story).
Trump’s long relationship with Epstein further exposes his moral bankruptcy and possible criminality. The two were close associates and owned residences near each other in New York and Palm Beach, socializing together frequently.
Trump famously described Epstein as a “terrific guy” who enjoyed the company of beautiful women, some “on the younger side.” Multiple reports suggest Trump knew about Epstein’s exploitation of minors, yet Trump continued their association until public scandal made it inconvenient.
Then there are Trump’s questionable international relationships, with none more alarming than his mysterious affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s first administration consistently favored Russian interests, dismissing election interference findings from American intelligence agencies, undermining NATO, and, in his second administration even withholding military aid from Ukraine, thus benefiting Putin’s geopolitical ambitions.
While the full nature of Trump’s entanglement with Putin remains hidden, Trump’s obsequious behavior toward the Russian dictator raises serious questions about financial leverage or compromised loyalties. For example, the only major country in the world Trump chose not to impose tariffs on this year was Russia.
Trump’s disturbing Russian connections also include his 2016 campaign manager and close confidant, Paul Manafort, whose career was dedicated to installing pro-Putin autocrats and corrupt oligarchs across Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Albania. Heidi Seigmund Cuda writes about his recent Albania connection in her great Bette Dangerous Substack newsletter.
Manafort was convicted of multiple felonies, including tax and bank fraud, stemming from his shady dealings overseas, actions intimately connected with Putin’s broader geopolitical ambitions, for which Trump pardoned him.
Trump’s choice of Manafort to lead his 2016 campaign wasn’t coincidental; it signaled to Moscow an openness to influence, further raising troubling questions about Trump’s susceptibility to foreign manipulation and complicity in Manafort’s criminal schemes.
Trump’s election interference is equally alarming. It began with hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to manipulate public perception during the 2016 campaign, for which he was convicted of felony election manipulation charges in Manhattan last year.
More brazenly, Trump attempted to subvert democracy in Georgia when he lost the 2020 election by demanding of Georgia’s secretary of state, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
His attempts to cling to power by any means necessary reached a terrifying crescendo with the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, ultimately joined by over 100 Republican members of Congress. This led to a federal indictment, making him the first former president charged with seeking to destroy the very democratic system that put him into power.
Trump’s abuse of presidential authority is chillingly unprecedented. Robert Mueller’s investigation laid out multiple instances where Trump criminally obstructed justice, brazenly interfering with federal investigations. He solicited foreign interference from Ukraine in the 2020 election, a move that led to his first impeachment.
Trump’s presidency was also marred by repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause as he profited directly from foreign governments funneling money through his hotels and golf clubs. He pitched Teslas from the White House in flagrant violation of the Hatch Act (penalty: five years in prison). Even after leaving office in 2021, Trump illegally retained classified documents and obstructed federal efforts to retrieve them, leading to further federal charges.
One of the most grotesque and morally bankrupt chapters of the Trump presidency unfolded in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, when Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly made the political calculation that the virus was “only hitting blue states” and disproportionately killing Black Americans so it could be weaponized.
According to reporting at the time, Kushner convened a secretive White House task force of mostly male, white, preppy private-sector advisors who concluded that a robust federal response to minimize deaths would be politically disadvantageous. Their analysis was clear: Since it was primarily Democratic governors and Black communities suffering the early brunt of the pandemic (New York, New Jersey, Washington), Trump could politically benefit by blaming local leadership and withholding meaningful federal aid.
It was a cynical—and deadly—strategy to let the virus burn through the opposition’s voter base that ultimately led to an estimated 500,000 unnecessary American deaths and gave us as the second-most Covid-19 deaths per person in the world.
This approach not only explains the administration’s chaotic and insufficient response to testing, supplies, and coordination, it exposes a level of callous—morally, if not legally criminal—political calculus rarely seen in modern American history since the days of the Trail of Tears.
Leaked documents and internal communications at the time confirmed that federal resources were distributed unevenly, often favoring Republican-led states.
Trump also regularly lashed out at Democratic governors like Gretchen Whitmer and Andrew Cuomo while ignoring their pleas for ventilators and personal protective equipment. As the death toll mounted, Trump publicly minimized the virus, holding rallies and rejecting masks, while privately admitting to journalist Bob Woodward that Covid-19 was “deadly stuff.”
This wasn’t just negligence: It was targeted neglect driven by racism and partisanship, carried out in the middle of a once-in-a-century public health emergency.
Beyond these abuses of power, Trump openly incited political violence. His rhetoric fueled vigilantism and violent confrontations at rallies.
Most infamously, on January 6, 2021, he incited an insurrection designed to halt the peaceful transition of power in a stunning betrayal without precedent in American history. He encouraged extremist and white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers, effectively endorsing domestic terrorism.
Right up until he took office and corruptly shut them down, investigations continued into potential wire fraud and misuse of funds from Trump’s “Save America” PAC, alongside scrutiny into financial irregularities involving his Truth Social platform.
Investigations into obstruction, witness intimidation, and potential bribery—now blocked as the Supreme Court has put him above the law, or shut down by his toadies—further compound his record of potential crimes.
Yet Trump’s ultimate crime goes beyond mere lawbreaking. He has methodically eroded democratic institutions, weaponized disinformation to undermine public trust, and attacked the traditionally nonpartisan independence of the judiciary, intelligence agencies, military, and law enforcement. His assaults on the press are right out of Putin’s playbook. Trump’s relentless assault on truth and democracy normalizes authoritarianism and political violence.
Thus, his most dangerous crime is not simply corruption or obstruction, nor even incitement of insurrection: It’s the deliberate attempted destruction of American democracy itself. This crime, far more profound than any individual act, threatens the survival of the republic itself.
If America is to survive as a free nation, we must confront the reality of Trump’s actions. He isn’t merely a criminal; he’s become the most dangerous criminal in American history precisely because his actions imperil the very foundations of our democracy.
Allowing such crimes to go unpunished risks setting a precedent that future would-be autocrats may follow, forever tarnishing the promise of American democracy. Once he’s out of power, our nation’s new mantra must become, “Never forget, never forgive, never again.”
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